A middle school teacher's thoughts on science, technology and learning

Thursday, April 01, 2010

Citing Internet Sources

The most common guidelines for citing sources come from the MLA. The Modern Language Association of America is the main professional association in the US for scholars of language and literature. The other common guidelines come from the APA (American Psychological Association).

I learned that in April of 2009, the newest MLA Handbook was released, and it made a few important changes (from the Write Source).

Underlining is no longer recommended to represent italics. Use italics instead.

Within the list of works cited, all entries must be identified by medium: Print, Web, DVD, CD-ROM, PDF file, and so on. List the appropriate medium(s) at the end of each entry. In the case of a Web source, the date of access follows the word “Web.”

Online sources no longer require a URL listing**.

So, what does this mean for you, kids? Well, if you want to cite an Internet source, here's what you need to do. Keep in mind that complete publication information may not be available for a website; so you should provide what is given. You should try and find the following information before you begin:

Publisher information, including the publisher name and publishing date. (it is suggested that you use use n.p. if no publisher name is available and n.d. if no publishing date is given.)

Date you accessed the material. (This is important because web pages often change, and information on the page may no longer be the same later)

Medium of publication (in most of our cases, this is "Web")

URL (if required, or for your own personal reference).

TO CITE AN ENTIRE WEB SITE (simplified):(NOTE: The color-coding in just to help you organize. The actual citation should be in plain black text.)

Editor or author name (if available). Name of Site. Version number. Name of institution/organization affiliated with the site, date of resource creation (if available). Medium of publication. Date of access.

"MLA no longer requires the use of URLs in MLA citations. Because Web addresses are not static (i.e., they change often) and because documents sometimes appear in multiple places on the Web (e.g., on multiple databases), MLA explains that most readers can find electronic sources via title or author searches in Internet Search Engines.

For people who still wish to require the use of URLs, MLA suggests that the URL appear in < angle brackets > after the date of access. Break URLs only after slashes."